


Hotel California

by DallasMemories



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, BEN IS DEAD SORRY FOLKS, Bisexual Diego Hargreeves, Crack and Angst, Diego Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Diego Hargreeves is Bad at Feelings, F/F, F/M, M/M, NONE OF THEM ARE RELATED OR ADOPTED BY REGINALD (EXCEPT KLAUS), POV Diego Hargreeves, Well mostly his POV but things can change ;), alternative universe, dealing with a loss, so expect trauma and angst, trigger warning for domestic violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:54:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26256709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DallasMemories/pseuds/DallasMemories
Summary: It starts as a drunk joke between two friends and becomes a promise when one of them dies.This is how quickly things can escalate when you decide to honor your best friend's memory and go on a date with someone you've never metoran AU where seven chaotic idiots go from strangers to family and Diego Hargreeves finally gets the hug he deserves.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	Hotel California

**Author's Note:**

> Leave all yer hope all who enters...  
> Nah, just kidding.  
> Hi, thanks for checking on this mess the author (aka me, duh) boldly calls a 'fic'.  
> Here's a couple things you should know beforehand:  
> 1\. This is raw and unedited work. I also don't have a beta, so if you feel like you are up to the task, lemme know :)  
> 2\. This is completely AU, none of them are siblings. Ben and Diego know each other and are best friends prior to the events of chapter one, Vanya also happens to be their mutual friend. Other than that there are no connections betweem the characters in the beginning.  
> 3\. I do not write graphic angsty stuff in all the detail, but I did put trigger warnings just in case, as this is not the fic for kids and let's be honest, these characters have a lot of mental stuff to unpack, so there is that.
> 
> That's pretty much all? Enjoy this mess xxx

Diego is stalling.

But there is only so long he can stand in the merciless Dallas heat before his feet move on his own and his hand reaches to open the glass doors.

_He shouldn’t be here. What the hell is he doing?_

It all began as a late night, drunken joke. He and his roommate / best friend Ben had one too many drinks, when a brilliant (not) idea to go online had crossed their minds. Long story short – he whined about feeling lonely, Ben suggested trying a dating app and they ended up creating a profile just as chaotic as Diego’s personality.

And then, _long story shorter_ , Ben died, and Diego never deleted that profile.

Out of guilt, memory, respect, desperation – fuck knows. Take your pick.

It kind of sat there for a while, inactive, aside from him mindlessly scrolling through the numerous messages and likes he got until Diego just started replying out of sheer boredom. And not like it cured his horrible single life, but the app has gotten him a few casual dates, enough to keep his interest in it, but nothing serious.

That until, IfIDieYoung89 came along.

Diego’s gotta admit that username was not what he wanted to read in his inbox at the time, but unlike sneaky compliments and praise, and nudes, he usually received, the message said: **_what will you leave behind if you die tomorrow?_**

And silly, naïve Diego clicked /reply/.

And that’s how it all began. Four months of texting back and forth, late night talks about everything in the world and good morning texts. Whoever was behind that screen, within few weeks became his closest friend, his confidant. And Diego would lie if he said the tone of their conversations had remained entirely platonic over time.

So, he asked an absolute stranger out on a casual, Friday evening date.

Yeah, the thing is, he doesn’t even know what IfIDieYoung89 looks like. No photos, no names, no pronouns, he might as well be on a date with a serial killer – and for some sick, twisted reason, the adrenaline of uncertainty buzzing under his skin makes him the most alive he had felt in months.

_Stop existing, Diego,_ Ben’s voice echoes in his head, _start living._

The bar that IfIDieYoung89 chose, _Rain S_ _helter,_ is empty. No wonder, really, he showed up pretty early for this type of place, but the door is open and a gentle lounge music is on, and no one ready to kick him out in sight, so he looks around shyly before daring to sit by the bar.

“Hello?”

The wooden stool creaks when he lowers himself down onto it to check his phone once again – a small sound enough to evoke others coming from somewhere not far, but he is too distracted by ‘no new messages’ to care.

“Would you look at that…”

He looks up from his home screen to meet a pair of curious green eyes, the first thing he notices before his mind loses its ability to form coherent sentences.

Don’t get him wrong, this is 2020, for heaven’s sake, and he lives in one of the most liberal neighborhoods, but somehow seeing makeup on THAT face is like being slapped with a brick. Sudden, disorienting.

_Its’s just eyeshadow and glitter, dumbass,_ his brain finally supplies, and he just gives in to the fact that his inner voice sounds much like Ben’s lately.

“Sorry, didn’t know if you were open…” he swallows nervously under the scrutiny of that gaze. Normally, Diego is rather indifferent to male attention, but this one is making him feel really, really weird.

“Oh I am…wide open, Bambi.” The guy practically purrs and if there wasn’t the tall bar counter separating them, Diego would actually consider retreating. “It’s too early for a drink. For someone like _you, goody two shoes_.”

“I am meeting somebody here.” _That’s good. Don’t give out much info._

He knows it’s the way some bartenders are – talkative, somewhat flirty – but Diego doesn’t like sharing private information with strangers (and not like he has any anyway).

“Pity. I am Klaus, by the way.”

“Diego.” He blurts out and mentally kicks himself afterwards for being a stupid impatient fuck. He could’ve given any name, and this guy wouldn’t know. Shit.

“Soo… ** _Diego…_** ” Klaus perches over, his elbows resting against the counter, chin propped up by his palms – so close, Diego can scent the remaining mint of the gum he must’ve had not so long ago. And fuck, he never knew his name could sound like THAT coming from anyone’s mouth.

“Are you here on a date? I bet it’s a date.”

“I..am not sure..” He glances at his dark phone screen. It lights up under his touch, showing him no new messages, and that as of now IfIDieYoung89 is 20 minutes late.

“Looks like you got stood up, handsome. That wound might need some alcohol to rub in.” He realizes Klaus followed his gaze and must’ve put two and two together. But he is Diego fucking Hargreeves, and there ain’t no man nor woman who can put his mood down like this.

“You know what… Thanks, but I better go. It was…nice meeting you?”

Klaus opens his mouth – but only shakes his head silently at god knows what, and his long messy curls do a slight bounce Diego is stupidly fascinated by.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stick around? I finish in two hours.”

And Diego is a big boy, alright. He knows what a question like this might imply, and really, only a blind and deaf person could miss on the aggressive flirty notes in the bartender’s behavior. And to make matters worse, Klaus, with his bright sparkly eyeshadow, and clingy black mesh shirt happens to be a very, very interesting offer for his…south side ‘brain’.

But Diego is also a big dumb Neanderthal, who cannot come out of that closet even if someone sets said closet on fire, so he starts to slowly step backwards, making a series of incoherent noises which are meant to resemble ‘no, thank you, I have to go’.

Well..close enough.

Klaus watches him, bemused, and clearly entertained.

“See you around, Bambi”, his fingers perform a small mocking wave, and Diego is pretty sure he holds his breath the entire way to that door and even afterwards when he runs across the street to his car.

***

After that comes radio silence. Diego wakes up every morning to no new messages in his inbox, and it takes an immense amount of will power not to text first and ask why he got stood up.

He lives on an autopilot – his work keeps him busy most days of the week, and there is always the option of tiring himself out in the gym whenever he starts moping.

And it’s good. The certainty is **safe.**

Boring, but safe.

Diego loves his job. Yeah, maybe offering self-defense classes is nowhere near something more fancy-shmancy, like being a VIP gym trainer (and he was offered that position once), but guess his need to protect people didn’t exactly stop when he left the police. Sometimes, although he shouldn’t and certainly doesn’t have to, he branches out from showing on “how to disarm your opponent and run” to things…much more dangerous after work hours.

In these few years of working with many different people, his eye is trained to notice patterns a civilian wouldn’t. Bruises here and there. Being late. Shaky hands.

Because as devastating as it is, not all people seek to learn self defense for the safety of their mind, no – some run from a danger much more real.

“We are like Batman and Robin”, Vanya, his assistant, remarks during one of their usual debriefings.

“No, we absolutely aren’t.” And it’s so easy to like her, really, with that disarming smile.

She is the brains, he is the muscle. She charms absolutely everyone into sharing their struggles.

And Diego? Well, Diego takes care of them.

“Alright, what do we have?”

“Ohhh, we have one girl in this new batch, Allison”, Vanya hands over one of the filled out forms, “possible domestic violence case. I talked to her a little, stalked the socials – the usual. Her husband is a bit…much.”

Diego stares at the paper filled out in an accurate cursive and the photo Vanya printed out from somewhere online. It’s a bit blurry, picturing a man and a woman in their early 30s tops, looking relatively happy for the camera and whoever was behind it.

“Kids?” he hums after a brief pause. Because she just looks like the type. The good mother type.

_Like his mother._

“Yes, one girl, born in the marriage. You are so good at this, boss?”

_He wonders what Grace would say if she saw him right now. Would she scold him for his life choices?_

“No, dear Robin… I am just a good mother’s son.”

But this is good, this is the first case in weeks, and a great thing to focus on, instead of thinking on how he got dumped by someone he never met. Now THAT would be lame.

_Here we go again,_ he thinks, because he just managed to put himself down by digging up the two most sensitive topics and his hand is caught midway to his phone and brought back swiftly.

Get a grip, man.

Vanya follows that movement with her usual look of childlike confusion.

“You aren’t on your phone as much these days.”

She is learning, Diego notes to himself.

“Read me.” He says, leaning back against his chair. It’s something they do to train themselves, a boulevard trick that proves useful time and time again.

“Hmm…” she studies over his professional poker face. “You wouldn’t break up with them out of the blue…Unless they did that? No, you were all dolled up on Friday… oh. OHH. Damn, boss…”

“Hey, no pitying, you know the drill.”

“Did they at least give you an explanation?”

He shakes his head, which in return makes Vanya frown even more.

“I didn’t text them either, so…….”

He is pretty sure the look she gives him is bordering between murderous and ‘I will steal your phone and fix this when you are not looking’, and at this point, Diego is desperate enough that he might just let her.

***

Allison is only few months older than him. She is also an orphan, unlike Diego who was raised by a single mother, has a lot of friends and an incredibly eventful social life.

A picture perfect for a lazy eye, but he knows better than to profile someone by their posts on instagram.

It’s past midnight, Diego is sitting in his car, enveloped in darkness like a cocoon that hugs him so tight that his black hoodie and jeans blend in.

Diego is waiting. There is no general rule to family fights, but the countless horror stories do have some truth in them – bad things often happen at night. Maybe not _tonight_ , though, because the lights in Allison’s bedroom are out soon after her family finishes their dinner. Guess even abusive husbands have their ‘days off’.

To kill some time, Diego is on his phone again. Nothing much to do, but time after time again he rereads his conversations with IfIDieYoung89, and as he does, anger bubbles in his chest. Before he knows, he is typing, _typing and deleting, then typing again._

**_‘Why did you do this to me?’_ **

God, it’s so overdramatic. Diego curses whoever did not include an edit message button in this app.

He shouldn’t even be there; he is on a job for fuck’s sake and it’s few hours before sunrise, so not like he is getting a reply any time soon.

But as Diego continues to indulge in self loathing, his phone, put on a silent mode, lights up with a soft vibration.

_One new message._

His heart skips a beat.

One short message.

**_I saw you that day, Diego. I panicked._ **

He stares at his screen, long enough until it goes black again, but even then Diego’s fingers continue to grip onto his phone as if it holds the answer to the main question of his life.

And he can get behind the whole “got cold feet, panicked” idea. But something in his gut is telling him to take the rose colored glasses off and look at the situation from another angle.

**“ _You could’ve texted me. Called. Anything. But you just cut me off”_**

There’s no answer, predictably. Suddenly his body feels just too heavy and exhausted. He slumps against the driver’s seat, head falling back when his eyes close.

Maybe he could sleep in his car tonight, whatever. What he won’t do is think about IfIDieYoung89, nope, thank you very much.

It’s a tempting idea to stay there instead of driving home. But Diego is not 20 anymore, and whether he likes it or not, his body much prefers to sleep on a memory foam mattress these days.

“Just five more minutes…” he mumbles to himself.

Maybe, ten. Yes, he can definitely do ten.

And it is ten minutes, or maybe an hour, or maybe an eternity passes until he jolts awake, brought back to reality by a gentle knock on his half rolled up car window. Diego narrows his eyes – the dim light from street lamps far ahead does almost nothing to illuminate the man standing by his car. But it’s still enough to see something and –

“Klaus?”

He asks, perplexed.

Klaus’ face lights up, beaming with a power of thousand suns -- so bright in the dark, Diego starts to feel dizzy.

“You remember!” and who the fuck sounds so cheerful at 4 in the morning?

“Of course I do?”

He wants to say that it’s a part of his job to remember people but bites on his tongue: it doesn’t matter. Diego could have the memory of a goldfish and still remember that name. Because Klaus was, _quite frankly_ , impossible to forget.

“Is everything alright? I was walking down the road and saw you sitting in this car..”

He must’ve been staring for longer than socially acceptable, because soon enough that smile turns into a smug expression.

_Just say something, you idiot._

“I…wanna come in?”

_Just…what._

“Why thank you!”

Diego watches himself move across the passenger seat to unlock the door, and it’s a goddamn slow motion disaster scene.

If Klaus notices anything, he chooses not to comment.

“Nice car… very grandpa chic.”

He shivers a little, rubbing his palms together and blowing on them to create an illusion of warmth. That brings Diego’s attention to his outfit or lack thereof: that neon green top does nothing to cover, and pretty sure the sideline cut outs of his pants go all the way up to…

Suddenly Diego’s cheeks are much warmer.

“Klaus, what are you doing here?”

“Well, you know how it is… I was working the late shift today..forgot my apartment keys at work and my roommate is dead asleep at this hour. He takes melato-something to help him sleep, and just dozes off like a gorilla on steroids.”

“That’s a very specific description.”

“Oh, you’ll get it when you see him. Anyway, I was spending my two hours of star gazing when I saw you and the rest is history.”

“Right…” very eloquent, Diego, good job.

_But seriously, is there no underwear cause the cut outs…_

“Wait, did you say you forgot your keys… Klaus, you’ve been locked out the whole night?”

“No biggie”, Klaus shrugs indifferently. “My roommate wakes up at six for his morning run, just gotta wait a little more. Aaaaand that’s my excuse. Now, what are you doing here, Mr. Dark and Broody?”

Stalking one of my students is definitely not the best answer.

“I am…a private detective of sort.”

Seriously? No one in their right mind will buy that.

….But for some unexplainable reason, Klaus does.

He makes a noncommittal sound. “That must be an interesting job.”

That’s an understatement.

“You are freezing.” Diego notes more matter-of-factly when he see the other shiver again. It’s not exactly the warmest night; the summer is long gone and after dinner hours get pretty chilly.

“Beauty demands sacrifice.” Klaus winks, turning the small mirror toward him to check himself out. “Ohhh fuuuuck. Scratch that, I look like a rat.”

He looks exhausted, sure. Like an exhausted, exotic bird caught in the metal cage of Diego’s car. His face doesn’t have that much glitter on as the day they met, only a smudged black eyeliner remains around his eyes that honestly make them ten times more captivating than legally allowed.

“I think you look lovely.”

_WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING._

“Ahh, such a charmer.”

Also a certified idiot, because his mouth and brain do not work in sync today.

In fact, it opens again, lips move, and even worse, his entire body moves when he leans forward to shrug off his hoodie and hand it over to Klaus:

“We could wait together?”

And in that moment, Diego swears he can hear Ben’s ghostly laughter in the distance.

_Good job, my friend, good job. Welcome to the new adventure._

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me in the comments or something


End file.
